Wheel-mounted luggage has become increasingly popular in these days when a person must normally carry and look after his or her own luggage. Such luggage can be seen in my earlier U.S. Pat No. 3,842,953 as well as in British Pat. Nos. 1,099,200 and 424,204 and in German Pat. No. 411,700. It is standard procedure to provide the wheels on such luggage, which may be a simple suitcase, steamer trunk, sample case, officer's chest, or the like, so that these wheels can be displaced between use positions standing up from the surface they are carried on and transport positions in which they lie on or are even recessed in this surface. Thus a person can, for instance, take his or her luggage off the carousel at an airline and actuate the mechanism to make the wheels stand up so that the luggage can then be easily rolled away. In my above-cited patent, for example, the entire wheel mechanism is mounted on one face of the suitcase and a handle is pulled from adjacent one end of the suitcase to cause wheels adjacent the other end of the suitcase to pivot through 90.degree. from positions recessed in the suitcase to positions standing up from it.
The known systems have several disadvantages. First of all the wheel mechanisms are relatively complex and, hence, heavy. As a result they add excessive weight to the piece of luggage, which weight is particularly disadvantageous when the luggage is not being rolled. Furthermore the complicated mounting structure normally necessitates forming a multiplicity of bosses, recesses, and grooves on the bottom wall of the piece of luggage in question, so that packing such a piece of luggage becomes rather difficult. If the wheel structure is not recessed in the bottom wall of the luggage it projects therefrom and makes handling of the luggage rather difficult.